I am not even going to pretend that I am Perl programmer. Perl gained popularity because of CGI. CGI has lost its popularity and Perl has gone back to what it was, a niche language.
Perl could have held on to its popularity had it been an easy language like PHP. The average person is not smart enough to handle everything Perl has to offer.
PHP is far less complicated. For the same reason, Visual Basic was/is popular and Java eventually has pushed out C++.

As usual I fail to see why php should be easier than perl (ok, I'll admit that ruby IS). and C in definiely more popular than basic*.
I think the issue with perl is that it lets ugly code go. think of python, feels like a jail, but no matter what kind of mess you make, pithon stays clean (so long as it compiles :P) I think what perl really need is a set of modules that go beyond the old use Strict , something that forces you to choose a subdialect (maybe custom, maybe conventional) and follow it, although there are other ways to write the code. this way you could choose between total freedom and a language of your choice, this is something strict languages cant even try doing, as they are already strict. For instance you may remove all object oriented constructs if you wish etc... and of course limit the use of such module to your code, avoiding clashes with modules or other's code.